Tech Chi­nese firm firm backs wins out con­do­mof US bat­tle deal

Bei­jing-basedA con­dom maker tech com­pa­nyin South Unis­plen­dourChina’s Guang­dongCorp provinceLtd has pulled­has won out a of law­suita pro­posed against$3.8 bil­lion a Ja­panese in­vest­ment com­pany in over­the US its disk com­pet­ing­drive mak­erWestern­claim to be man­u­fac­tur­erDig­i­tal Corp of be­causethe world’sthe Chi­nese thinnest firm pro­phy­lac­tic.deems the US govern­ment The would Guangzhounot ap­proveYuexiu Dis­trict­the deal. Peo­ple’s Court pro­nounced on Unis­plen­dour,Mon­day that a Tokyo-based­sub­sidiary of con­dom State-owned­brand Okamoto con­glom­er­ate used Ts­inghuaun­fair prac­tices Hold­ings to com­peteCo Ltd, said again­ston Wed­nes­day Guangzhou the Dam­ingde­ci­sion United was Rubber made Prod­ucts.af­ter the Com­mit­tee Guin­nes­son For­eignWorld Records ver­i­fied In­vest­ment­the Chi­ne­sein the com­pany’s Aoni United con­dom, States,which hasa an av­er­age gov­ern­ment­thick­ness of or­ga­ni­za­tion 0.036 mm, as the world’s thinnest that in De­cem­ber re­views2013 — break­ing for­eign the pre­vi­ous in­vest­mentsrecord of 0.038 mmin set by Okamoto US in busi­nesses,2012. an­nouncedBut Guangzhouit will in­ves­ti­gate Daming the United deal Rub­ber­for se­cu­rity Prod­ucts rea­sons. said it The found Chi­nese Okamoto’s com­pany con­domshad been­still on at­tempt­ingsale bear­ingto pur­chase phras­esa 15 such per­centas “world’s stake thinnest”in Western and Dig­i­tal “Guin­ness since World Septem­ber. Record” The in deal May 2014. would have made Unis­plen­dour A law­suit Western­was filed Dig­i­tal’sin Septem­ber largest share­holder2014 by the and Chi­ne­se­given it com­pa­nya board again­st­seat in its the Ja­pane­seCal­i­for­nia-based coun­ter­part, com­pa­nyc­it­ing false which ad­ver­tis­ing sells hardand seek­ing­drives to 1 yuana long ($0.15)list of as US com­pen­sa­tion govern­ment for agen­cies. eco­nomic loss. Unis­plen­dour is still find­ing ways The to court work held with that Western Okamoto Dig­i­tal. knew The about com­pa­ni­es­the ver­i­fied­said they world will record­set up anda $158 or­dered mil­lionit to soft­warestop sell­ing joint con­doms ven­ture, bear­ing­with the false Chi­nese ad­ver­tis­ing­firm holdin­gand pay a the51 per­cent com­pen­sa­tion.stake.

The move had a greater im­pact on Western Dig­i­tal, which is bid­ding for flash­mem­ory gi­ant SanDisk Corp. The com­pany trimmed its of­fer to $15.8 bil­lion in cash and stock, sharply down from the orig­i­nal of­fer of $19 bil­lion.

Shares of the two com­pa­nies also went down.

“Unis­plen­dour pulled out of the trans­ac­tion be­cause it was con­cerned that CFIUS would dis­ap­prove the ac­qui­si­tion of (the) Western Dig­i­tal (stake). We do not know if there was a pos­si­ble­brand as mit­i­ga­tiona pub­lic­ity that stunt. would have Some sat­is­fied ne­ti­zens CFIUS,on Sina but Wei­bowas even claimed that un­ac­cept­ablethey had only heard about the to Chi­ne­seUnis­plen­dour,” con­dom brand be­cause of the law­suit. said Theodore

Yoshiyuki Okamoto, Mo­ran, pres­i­dent of the Ja­panese se­nior con­dom­fel­low com­pany, also viewedand the prin­ci­pal le­gal chal­lenge as self-pro­mo­tion­alCFIUS in­ves­ti­ga­torand de­scribed at the the le­gal Peter­son bat­tle In­sti­tuteas “prim­i­tive”,for ac­cord­ing In­ter­na­tion­alto a Eco­nomic­sre­port in the in­Wash­ing­ton.Fi­nan­cial Times.

It Guangzhouwas the third Daming time Unit­edthis year Rubber that Prod­uct­san in­vest­men­thas de­nied plan the was claims. stranded be­cause of se­cu­rity “We con­cernssued Okamotofrom the in­tend­ingUS. to Gen­estop their Cao, act prin­ci­pleof in­fringe­ment.an­a­lyst at We For­res­ter­de­cided to Re­search de­mand Inc, com­pen­sa­tion­said the scrappedof only 1 deal yuan, addsa nom­i­naluncer­tain­ties amount, to be­cause fu­ture we tech didn’t ac­qui­si­tions. want the pro­ceed­ings to get stuck on the “Re­cent mat­ter of failed eco­nomic ac­qui­si­tions losses,” un­der­linedVic­tor Chan, Chi­nese gen­eral tech­nol­ogy man­ager of the com­pa­niesChi­nese con­dom will com­pany,find in­creas­ing­told China dif­fi­cul­tyDaily on Tues­day.when buy­ing Call­ing out Okamo­toa US firm “a in shame­less­both hard­ware com­peti­tor”,and soft­wareChan said seg­ments,” the Ja­panese Cao com­pa­ny­said. con­tin­ued to claim it was the man­u­fac­turer Con­tact of the the writer world’sat thinnest paulwelitzk­in­con­dom to “take ad­van­tage of @chi­nadai­lyusa.comtheir pop­u­lar­ity in China and andof Chi­nese gaoyuan con­sumers’ trust in @chi­nadaily.com.cn­their brand”.

We didn’t want the pro­ceed­ings to get stuck on the mat­ter of eco­nomic losses.”